


BAU, meet Bright

by OmegaCodex, saviourhere



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:26:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OmegaCodex/pseuds/OmegaCodex, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saviourhere/pseuds/saviourhere
Summary: Here's the first chapter.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the first chapter.

“Murders are the only thing keeping me sane! -- Solving them, that is.” Malcolm added absentmindedly, not noticing the terrified expressions on onlookers faces. 

Gil was distraught at his statement. “Look at yourself Malcolm. Your nightmares have only gotten worse from all the time you’ve spent with your father. I can’t let you do this to yourself! You’re coming apart at the seams, Malcolm. And besides,” Gil replied wiry in his tone “your mother would kill me if I let you continue this way. Please Malcolm, take a break.” 

“But --” Malcolm broke up, voice as though he was about to sob. “It’s the only thing I know how to do. I can’t stop doing it. I can’t be like him…” He trailed off, in an ever-quieter voice. 

“Still…” Gil insisted. “Why don’t you go and hang out with Vijay sometime? You need to talk to people.” _People that aren’t your father or the team_ went unsaid. “Especially after being locked in the same room with Jonah. It’s important to your mental health.” 

“Mental health? What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.” Malcolm poked fun at his mental state.

“Please, don’t joke. Not about that. It’s not funny.” Gil said, sighing. “You need to take time off.”

“But --” 

“I’m serious Bright. You need to take time off. You’ll drive yourself insane at this pace. Do you really want to be in with your father? Because that’s where you’re headed.” He winced at his own words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.” 

But Malcolm didn’t want to hear any excuses. “Even you’d say that?!” He demanded, clenching his nails tightly into his balled up fists. _Oh no… Am I drawing blood?_

“You know that’s not what I mean. I’d never mean that! And besides, I’ll call Jessica if you don’t decide to take a break. You never did go on a vacation -- I bet she’d be willing to send you off somewhere.” 

“Fine.” He glared at Gil once more before finally he gave in. “I’ll take a break, but if anything of note comes up, you _will_ bring me in.”

“Here's hoping that there are no interesting murders then.” Gil laughed, raising his coffee mug as if toasting to his words.

Malcolm merely pouted, Gil’s earlier transgressions had already been filled back in his brain, forgiven but not forgotten. “It’s New York City, there will always be murders. So, which one is being looked into now?” He asked, trying to divert attention from the impending doom of time off. 

Gil raised a single eyebrow. “Don’t think I won’t call Jessica if you try to avoid it.” At Gil’s words, Malcolm blanched. 

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” He raised his hands as if to surrender. “But if something interesting happens you have to call me.” 

“I will, I will.” Gil promised “Now, it’s time for you to head home.”

* * *

“So, why are we heading into NYPD jurisdiction, again?” Rossi asked Hotchner. 

“The NYPD doesn’t have any leads, and the UnSub is killing every other day, quite literally at that.” Hotchner replied, pinching his nose. “Are we all here?” Hearing the agents’ affirmations, he continued “J.J., please tell the pilots that we are ready to go.” Nodding yes, she went off to do so.

Once they were in the sky, flying high up, the questions began again in earnest. “So, the agent leading the case -- she’s good? ‘Cause I’ve heard rumors about her being a pain.” Derek asked.

“Yeah, she’s good. She was my liaison to Scotland Yard a while back -- we are lucky to have her now. Don’t put stock into the rumors though.” Hotch admonished him.

* * *

Malcolm Bright was bored out of his mind. _There’s only so many times I can polish my practically prehistoric weapons. Hah! Alliteration.,/i >. Before he could get up to axe throwing once more, his phone rang._

“You called it. There’s been more murders.” 

“So --”

“Yes.” Gil sighed “You can come in. But be aware --” He was cut off by Malcolm turning off his phone call in a hurry to rush out the door. “I’m on it!”

* * *

“You shouldn’t be here.” Gil told Malcolm. 

“But, you promi--”

“The FBI’s here about the murders.”

“So?”

“The _FBI_ Malcolm. The same people who kicked you out because of your father.”

“I. Do. Not. Care. I’m so _bored_ Gil! I can’t stand it, I need to help with a murder! Solving one.” He clarified for the second time in twice as many days. “Please, Gil. Let me help.” 

“... Fine.” Gil gave in. “But you will take a _real_ vacation after this, you hear me? I don’t want to see or hear the hide or hair of you in New York for a week.”

“Only if you don’t let mother know -- she can get rather _overbearing_ , you know.” Malcolm shivered at his own words. 

“I have to let her know.”

“Do you really?” His point made, Malcolm moved to the entrance of the Lieutenant’s room in police headquarters.


	2. Chapter 2

“Martha, grab me a change of clothes and some coffee.” The blonde woman exclaimed, having seemingly noticed the new arrivals. “Oi, neither of you are who I sent for.” She said, deflating from her previously excited temperance. 

“No, we aren’t.” Gil replied.

Not one to be left out of a conversation, especially when he had slept the previous night, Malcolm added to what Gil had said. “And you are?”

But the woman simply ignored him and directed her next words to Gil. “Then you can help Martha grab my things.”

“No, we can’t. Or rather, we won’t. We have a different case to work on, one much, _much_ more important than helping you move around your stuff.”

“Do you really have a case more important than a serial shooter on the street of New York?”

Bouncing on his feet, Malcolm jumped in. “I wasn’t aware that people compared crimes and criminals like they do, well, other things”

Gil cut Malcolm off before he could continue. “Bright, this is not the time for that. Anyways, Bright’s right. There’s nothing that we can do. We have our own killer to catch.”

“Fine.” The blonde woman huffed. “Go and play at doing something useful, while we are saving lives.”

“So you consider not all lives to be equal?”

“Of course I consider them ---”

“Bright…” Gil warned.

* * *

“Finally, Hotch.” She glanced at the others behind him as though only just noticing them ”The BAU, you’re all here. You won’t believe what sort of rude people I’ve had to deal with all day.”

“Really? How bad were they, Agent Joyner?” Hotch asked.

“Just horrible. They think that their case is more important than helping with this one.” Kate replied. 

Face-palming, Hotch responded. “Kate, we’ve talked about this.”

“Still, there’s no way that their case is more important than this.”

To the side, Derek was muttering to Reid. “I can see how those rumors spread.”

“It really is fascinating, isn’t it? From how Hotch talked about her, I would have assumed her to be very different from this.” Reid descended into rambles “Just imagine, I could write another doctorate paper on this…”

“Reid, I don’t think Hotch would appreciate that.” Derek said. 

“... You’re probably right.”

* * *

Raising the sheets that were on the victim’s body, Malcolm Bright née Whitly was ignoring his phone and paying attention to the man’s body. “Ooooh that looks painful.” He said.

“It really must’ve been.” Edrisa agreed with him. “I mean, being skinned alive? But the work, the incision marks that the killer made in order to cut the victims skin off it’s beautiful.”

“It really is.” Malcolm gasped, looking at the bodies. “The cut lines are so neat -- there’s no signs that the victim moved at all during it. I wonder what they were drugged with.”

“You know, I have that information right here. I figured it would be better to go over it together…” Said Edrisa, raising up a folder. 

“Oh, Edrisa, you really know how to intrigue a man.”

“Yeah, a murder obsesed man.” J.T. muttered under his breath. 

“So, what type of poison was it? I mean, there must have been some sort of immobilizing agent given how the skin was precisely flayed off of the victim…” Malcolm continued, ignoring J.T. whilst covering the bodies once more in the examiner’s sheets.

“You might not like this.” She warned, wincing as she glanced at the toxicology report. “Since it looks like ketamine was administered in doses high enough to create a dissociative state, but not high enough to knock the poor guy out.”

At her words, both Gil and Malcolm winced. _I could have fallen to that fate if Malcolm didn’t warn me_. 

_That -- that’s the same thing my father used._ But all Malcolm could do was glance at his hands for a hot second. “Is there anything else? Specifically, about the second victim.”

“Yup!” Edrisa chirped, happy to distract him from the memories of his father. “You see the woman next to him?” She gestured at the body on the next table over. “She was found at the scene with him, with liguarature marks covering her hands, feet, and mouth. She died from cyanide poisoning, not blood loss.”

“Really? So the cuts on her carotid artery were made post-mortem then?”

“Yup! Guess where the cyanide was from though.”

“Almonds?” Malcolm guessed, enchanted by the bodies present.

“Wrong plant, though you did get the right letter of the alphabet. It was due to apples, specifically apple seeds.” Edrisa replied, just as bouncy as bright had been earlier shooting him finger guns.

Malcolm whistled. “That is a lot of apple seeds.”

“I know, right?” 

“Is there any connection between the victims, Gil?”

“Oh, now you decide to talk to me.” Gil said. “Other than them being husband and wife, no there isn’t a connection between them.” He added sarcastically.

“Gil.” Malcolm pouted. “Were there any cameras or anything?”

“No. You know better than me how the people in SoHo are.”

“I guess.” Malcolm grimaced at the memories of his mother’s high society soirées. “Well, is there anything else of note?”

“No, nothing.” Noticing Malcolm’s expression, Gil cut him off before he could speak. “And before you can ask, we can head off to the crime scene -- _if and only if_ you’ve eaten.”

“Gil…” Malcolm laughed nervously. “Of course I’ve eaten today. I had an apple. Well, part of an apple, though now it seems pretty unappetising to eat more of one given how the killer killed.” But he was just making excuses and Gil knew that. They stared each other in the eyes until the latter gave in.

“Fine, Bright.” His face softened, taking on a sad look. “I’ll let that be for now, but next time you have to eat more.”

“Okay, okay, I will.” Bright rose his hands. 

His phone rang. _Caller Unknown_ , it said. It was declined.

* * *

“So, Agent Joyner, has there been any new developments since we were called in?” Rossi asked. 

“There’s been another shooting. It’s marked out on that board over there…” Kate gestured to the side, where Reid was staring intensely.

“It’s strange…” He muttered. “The victims are all adults, but that’s all they have in common. They’ve been found in all boroughs except for this one.” Reid circled an area in marker. “Since the victims are so scattered, I can’t narrow down the UNSUB’s hunting ground. Going off of what we have though, we can see that the UNSUB is likely not comfortable in the area, so they’re either from there or it's too far off. But since -- ” He was cut off by Garcia.

“There’s a problem with that, actually.” She gulped nervously. “You see, me and the cop assigned to surveillance have been examining the footage and, well, it looks like there's more than one person” She finished quickly, rushing through the final words. 

“If we have multiple UNSUBs that _would_ explain it -- they would not feel comfortable close to where they met up or lived. They’d think it would serve to draw attention away from themselves, but it’s only bringing us closer.” He replied to Garcia, though Reid still faced the board. “It’s rather interesting that they’d choose to use guns, actually, in a city like New York. There’s relatively strict gun laws here which means that they likely have at least one person registered with a gun.” Finally turning around, Reid addressed Garcia directly. “Could you run a check for people within the borough of Queen’s, specifically those with gun permits and that earn higher than the median income? That should narrow down our suspects pool…”

“On it, Reid.” Garcia gave him a thumbs up.

* * *


End file.
